The prelude to this note was one of those nights when Broca's area and Wernicke's area of the cerebral cortex had a party while the rest of the brain was busy cleaning up the mess in there. For some reason the restless mind dredged up a strange word and ruminated on it until morning. By the time breakfast was over I had almost forgotten it. Let's see; was it thu... or maybe thau...? I didn't know the rest. Maybe it was thunbergia, which is Black Eyed Susan Vine. I knew that from my time working at the greenhouse. That didn't feel right, so I Googled thau, and while I was typing, thaumaturgy popped up as a suggestion. Right. Thaumaturgy. That was it! I recognized the sound of it but had no idea what it meant. Wikipedia helped out with the answer; thaumaturgy is about magic, wonders, miracles.
The rational, analytical mind is aware that the world does things a certain way. It doesn't disobey its own rules. Even it's unpredictability is predictable. In Lotto 649, for example, your chance of winning the jackpot is one in 13,983,816 (that's mathematics) but it seems like you have better luck if the number you play is your lover's birthday. That's thaumaturgy. If you buy a ticket, the chance of losing $3 is 100% regardless of how you choose the number. If you don't play the lottery, you have saved almost enough for bus fare to get to the dentist. You'll have to shell out another $3.25 to get home again. That's mathematics, and it isn't as much fun as playing the lottery with a magic number. That's why we prefer thaumaturgy.
So let's play the lottery. In 2023-24, the Ontario lottery and gaming commission OLG will earn a projected net profit for the year of $2.6 billion. Gambling is actually a tax on thaumaturgy, and as long as the money keeps coming in, the government isn't going to explain what they're up to. The premier couldn't pronounce thaumaturgy anyway.
Thaumaturgy is incredibly popular even though most people have never heard of it. Ask Google "how to get a miracle". It will return ten links followed by a button labelled [More Results] which gets another ten, and so on until you get tired of more results. If you click one of those links, you will get a lot of inspirational advice followed by the [Donate] button. The urge to donate is thaumaturgy. Spoiler: there is nobody handing out miracles to those who pay up.
That scam goes back thousands of years. Way back when, because nobody knew how things worked or how to fix them, a miracle was the only hope of getting an advantage over unpleasant circumstances. As a result, there were itinerant thaumaturgists living off people who were looking for miracles. Since then, we have science. Thaumaturgy has morphed into the last hope for those who don't trust science. Believers in nonscience (there are many) will pay pet psychics to tell them why Rover is off his kibble. If Rover gets his appetite back, the psychic gets the credit. If not, Rover's owner gets the blame. Either way the psychic gets rich.
I confess, I've been poking fun at magic and miracles. I suspect there are good reasons for thaumaturgy, since the mind takes to it so readily. Einstein explained our options: “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert's cerebral cortex was more interesting than mine. He was aware that the world does things a certain way, and thought of that as a miracle. "Everything is a miracle" says it all.
The sky was cloudy until the moon took its first bite of the sun right on schedule. In a few minutes the clouds moved on and we got to see it all. It was a miracle, no thaumaturgy required. What are the odds of that?
*************
Understanding how things work
is a miracle.
Knowing there is something more to be understood
is a miracle.
We poet-scientists are unlikely winners
of countless improbable lotteries
in the long story of being and becoming.
Enjoy the miracle.
**************
Pet psychics and the eclipse: CBC News
Bogus DNA Paternity Tests (Thaumaturgy dressed up as science): Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan, CBC News
No comments:
Post a Comment
Let me know what you think.